Democracy Undone: Systematic Minority Advantage in Competitive Vote MarketsCasellaAlessandra M.authorColumbia University. Economics TurbanSebastienauthorColumbia University. Economics Columbia University. Economics originatorcontributortextWorking papersNew York Department of Economics, Columbia University 2012We study the competitive equilibrium of a market for votes where voters can trade votes for a numeraire before making a decision via majority rule. The choice is binary and the number of supporters of either alternative is known. We identify a sufficient condition guaranteeing the existence of an ex ante equilibrium. In equilibrium, only the most intense voter on each side demands votes and each demand enough votes to alone control a majority. The probability of a minority victory is independent of the size of the minority and converges to one half, for any minority size, when the electorate is arbitrarily large. In a large electorate, the numerical advantage of the majority becomes irrelevant: democracy is undone by the market.Economics Department of Economics Discussion Papers 1213-10http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15388EnglishNNCNNC2012-12-06 11:57:16 -05002013-08-06 16:03:17 -04009391eng